Blue Origin has flown an extremely successful uncrewed certification flight of its second New Shepard spacecraft on Wednesday, thereby increasing the chances of effectively doubling the tourists it can fly back and forth into suborbital space.

The RSS Kármán Line capsule is named for the imaginary boundary at 100 kilometers of altitude separating the atmosphere from space; it launched to suborbital space from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site at 8:27 a.m. PT. This was the 27th flight of a New Shepard launch vehicle since 2015. All those missions used the same capsule, the RSS First Step, bringing 43 people to the edge of space since crewed missions started in 2021. (Boosters, of which there are several, don't get names.)

"A new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new booster and a new crew capsule," said Maggie McNeece of Blue Origin during a launch livestream.

The vehicle had some new upgrades to improve performance and reliability, Blue Origin said, as well as improved payload accommodations on the booster. That booster carried five payloads for this mission, while seven additional payloads were placed inside the capsule. While Blue Origin did not release details on all of the payloads, McNeece said all but one represented in-house technology demos. Those included two lidar sensors for the "lunar permanence" program, as well as a navigation system for both New Shepard and New Glenn - - Blue Origin's first orbital rocket, which could break orbit and launch before the end of the year.

There were two technical aborts on October 7 and October 13, followed by a successful launch. The booster split from the capsule about four minutes after liftoff, and about six minutes into the flight the capsule autonomously returned to Earth under a parachute.

Blue Origin said the new capsule would boost its "flight capacity to better meet growing customer demand." It's unclear what launch cadence that the company is expecting to meet in the coming months.